The return of the Bubble Quiz: The 100 zip codes with the thickest bubbles

We come to the end of a year during which it became obvious to just about everyone that America really does have a new elite that that is isolated from and often ignorant about white mainstream America. It seems like an appropriate time to present some final results from the NewsHour’s database of scores on the Bubble Quiz. I posted preliminary results last spring. Now I’ve got lots more scores and have had enough time to vet and analyze the data more thoroughly.

A little background for those who are new to the Bubble Quiz: In Coming Apart, a book I published in 2012, I asked my readers to score themselves on a 25-item test titled “How Thick is Your Bubble?” Scores could range from 0 to 100. The lower the score, the thicker one’s elite cultural bubble. Last spring, Paul Solman interviewed me for the NewsHour’s regular Thursday feature, “Making Sen$e.”

New York’s Central Park, Twenty20.

The Making Sen$e staff also created a version of the Bubble Quiz that could be taken online. As I write, more than 142,000 people have posted their scores. Along with those scores, participants were asked to report their ages, current zip codes, and the zip codes where they lived when they were ten years old.

The Bubble Quiz had the specific purpose of testing your familiarity with mainstream white America, not with all of mainstream America. Here’s how I explained it in Coming Apart:

Some of the questions are ones that whites will get right more often than minorities, and that people who do not live in metropolises will get right more often than people who do. That’s because I am writing about the problems of the new upper class, the new upper class is overwhelmingly white and urban, and the readers of this book are overwhelmingly white and urban. (p. 102)

Today I’ll give you some basic results and a list of the 100 zip codes with the lowest mean bubble scores — by my logic, the zip codes with the thickest bubbles. I’ll follow this up in a few days with a list of affluent, high-education zip codes that are the most unbubbly—for the elite among you, places where you could raise your kids with a somewhat lower probability that they grow up to be isolated elitist snobs.

Some Basic Stats

In preparing the data, I deleted cases without valid and geographically-defined zip codes and respondents who were very young or suspiciously old. I also cleaned the database of cases in which the same person appeared to have taken the test a few minutes apart. This left me with 136,677 respondents ages 20–99 with valid bubble scores and current zip codes. For multivariate analyses, I further restricted the sample to the 130,919 who had valid zip codes for age 10 as well.

It is not a nationally representative sample — not surprising, considering that the first thirty or forty thousand people who took the quiz were mostly people who watch PBS, which has a famously well-educated, sophisticated audience. Even after the first few months, the people who took the quiz online were necessarily people who take online quizzes — not your average American. And so it came to pass that the typical quiz-taker came from a zip code that was 28% richer than that of the average American, with 55% more people with college educations and 34% fewer people without high school diplomas. The zip codes of the quiz-takers were whiter and more Asian than those of the average American, and less black and Latino. They were more urban, with the typical quiz-taker living in a city with more than twice the median population of the city where the average American lives. The mean bubble scorewas 41.4 with a standard deviation of 16.3. Correcting for the skew in the sample produced an estimated current national mean of 45.0 and a standard deviation of 16.1.

More or less by accident (I devised the quiz as a teaching device), the Bubble Quiz is a pretty darn good test. Its scores have the desirable psychometric property of forming an almost perfect normal distribution (a bell curve). More importantly, the scores were, as I hoped, related to the socioeconomic status (SES) of the zip code where people lived, with SES measured by a combination of median family income and the percentage of persons age 25 and older who have a college education. The data for assessing zip codes were taken from the 2010–2014 combined American Community Surveys, conducted by the Census Bureau.It turned out that virtually all the effect on the bubble score is driven by the percentage of adults with a college degree in the zip code where the respondent lived.

Here are the basic correlations, on a scale of –1 (a perfect negative relationship) to +1 (a perfect positive relationship) of the bubble score with the SES index and its component parts:

Correlations for the zip code at age 10:

SES index –.38

Percent of adults with a BA –.41

Median family income –.36

Correlations for the current zip code

SES index –.29

Percent of adults with a BA –.34

Median family income –.25

In the social sciences, these are respectable correlations. But the really interesting finding emerged when I moved from these simple correlations to a multivariate look at the data. When I controlled for the age of the respondent and the urbanization of the zip code, it turned out that virtually all the effect on the bubble score is driven by the percentage of adults with a college degree in the zip code where the respondent lived. The zip code’s median family income had almost no independent effect. Another interesting finding: the zip code where people lived at age 10 had a modestly larger effect on their bubble scores than their current zip code. It’s not an implausible result, but it’s also not one I would have confidently predicted ahead of time.

A third interesting finding is one that I presented in the earlier posts but bears showing again with the larger sample sizes: The relationship between the bubble score and the zip code’s SES is nonlinear. Take a look at this graphic:

For people who live in zip codes in the bottom quartile of SES (the x axis in the graphic), increases in SES had little association with the bubble score. In the middle two SES quartiles, scores gradually declined. In the top SES quartile, increases were associated with accelerating declines in the bubble score, becoming especially steep for those in the top few percentiles.

The sample sizes are large enough to have some confidence that this drop-off at the top of the SES range is real: 41,565 of the bubble scores were registered by people who are now living in zip codes in the top SES decile, and 26,923 of them come from people who lived in such zip codes at age ten.

The important point about the graph is that the top few percentiles are crucial for understanding our cultural divide. The people living in zip codes in the top two percentiles include almost all of those who run the nation’s culture, economy, and politics. And that’s where the bubble scores plunge.

With that as preface, it’s time to look at America’s 100 bubbliest zip codes. Of the 2,439 zip codes that had 15 or more respondents, here are the 100 zip codes with the lowest mean bubble scores in the country. The means are based on the zip codes where people live now, not when they were age 10.

The New York City area dominates, accounting for 34 zip codes in the top 100. Manhattan alone has 18 zip codes in the top 100, including all the zip codes in the Upper East Side and Upper West Side. The zip codes surrounding San Francisco Bay constituted the next largest contribution, amounting to 29 zip codes. I have divided them somewhat arbitrarily between those associated with San Francisco and those of Silicon Valley. The Boston area had 15 zip codes and Los Angeles 8. That adds up to 86 out of 100. The entire rest of the country had just 14. The lowest mean score for the top 100 was 23.0 (Fremont, California) and the highest was 29.8 (the Rittenhouse Square area of Philadelphia).The zip codes in the Washington area where the city’s movers and shakers live are extremely elite, but only one made it into the Top 100 on the Bubble Quiz. That doesn’t mean Washington isn’t in a bubble.

The dog that didn’t bark was Washington DC. The zip codes in the Washington area where the city’s movers and shakers live are extremely elite, but only one made it into the Top 100 on the Bubble Quiz. That doesn’t mean Washington isn’t in a bubble. A total of 2,633 people living in the Washington area’s zip codes that are in the 99th SES percentile submitted bubble scores. The mean was 33.8, more than 11 points below the national average. But the elite Washington zip codes aren’t nearly as extreme as the elite zip codes in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and the Silicon Valley/San Francisco region.

Along with the top 100 I must add some other zip codes that are conspicuously bubbly even though they didn’t meet my minimum requirement of 15 respondents. Fourteen zip codes had 10–14 respondents and scores lower than 27, meaning that they were virtually a lock to have qualified for the top 100 if they had added just a few more respondents. In order of scores from low to high, they were Westborough, MA (with an incredibly low mean of 18.7), Rockville Centr,e NY, Briarcliff Manor, NY, Old Greenwich, CT, Del Mar, CA, Mount Kisco, NY, Malibu, CA, Chestnut Hill, PA, Stanford, CA’s second zip code (94304), Lincoln, MA, Tarzana, CA, Rockport, MA, Greenwich, CT, and Manhasset, NY.

How well did the Bubble Quiz database cover the people who live in elite zip codes? In the entire United States, 414 zip codes were in the top two SES percentiles, with a total population of 6.28 million people. Of those, 212 had fifteen or more respondents to the Bubble Quiz — just a little more than half. But the ones with that many respondents also tended to be the most populous elite zip codes, holding a total of 5.02 million people. In other words, zip codes with 15 or more respondents amounted to 80% of Americans who live in those elite zip codes. I also just identified the zip codes with 10–14 respondents who would have qualified for the top 100, which brings us up to 88% of the population in elite zip codes. Scanning the zip codes that make up the remaining 12% indicates that almost all the well-known elite towns have low scores, albeit based on fewer than 10 respondents. Zip codes with means lower than 27 and at least 3 respondents were Pound Ridge, NY, Saddle River, NJ, Glen Rock, NJ, Gladwyne, PA, Southport, CT, a downtown Chicago zip code (60603), and the lower Manhattan zip code (10282) just to the west of Tribeca.

Agree with JEM, I was surprised to see Fremont leading the list so it is likely there because of the high proportion of Asians living there now. Traditionally Fremont was a blue-collar East Bay town; it is now a bedroom community for Silicon Valley but still less prestigious than Palo Alto, Woodside, Portola Valley, Atherton etc.

I would say the numbers show LA to be considerably less bubbly than NYC or the Bay Area. Metropolitan LA has twice the population of the SF Bay Area but only 8 zip codes in the top (or bottom) 100 while SV + SF have 29.

I am going to guess that the working-class Hispanic population in SoCal is SO LARGE that only the most enclosed of communities don’t have at least some admixture; the question is whether many of the old LA area suburbs have a barbell distribution, with a big mass at one end and a big mass at the other. I’m surprised Irvine even pops out a 27, as it’s the purest Silicon Valley analogue in SoCal and probably more upscale these days than, say, Fremont or San Mateo in the SF Bay.

I’m not clear on how this measures familiarity with “white” mainstream culture.
I scored a 62, but any black or Hispanic taking the test who had lived in rural and small town areas, and there are many millions who do, would have scored the same.
Seems to me it is a rural and blue collar test much more than one related to race.
I had a lot more in common with the black guys from the rural south I was in the air force with than the soft handed, pajama boy white twerps 75 miles away in Silicon Valley.

As a “Hispanic taking the test who had lived in rural and small town areas”, I wholeheartedly agree, Brian B. I grew up in rural Somervell County, Texas and served in the Air Force just as you did. Much of my stint with AFRES was at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth (now NAS Fort Worth JRB). In both military and civilian life, I had more in common with white Anglos and blacks who also came from rural areas or small towns than with “elite” Hispanics from large cities like Dallas and Houston.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to correlate with political views. The implication of the test is one of a liberal globalist elite holding common people in contempt but I scored 4 but consider myself conservative. I just don’t like Bud and fishing etc.

1. It is ZIP Code and not Zip code.
2. When considering ZIP Codes at age 10, then the demographics of that ZIP at that time need to be considered. Many outer suburbs have had dramatic changes in the last 60 years.
3. Proud of my 12. I will work on lowering it.

To be more precise, the areas Dr. Murray analyzed using 2010–2014 combined American Community Survey data are actually ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs). For most areas, ZIP Codes and ZCTAs are the same, but due to the methodology used by the Census Bureau, some addresses will have ZCTAs that differ from their actual ZIP Code.

I don’t know if the distinction between ZCTA and ZIP Code materially affects Dr. Murray’s analysis (my hunch is that does not).

I wonder if there isn’t a corresponding bubble on the other end: evangelicals who have never had a friend who believes in evolution, people who have never had a friend with a PhD or who have never listened to NPR, never seen a documentary or don’t believe in global warming. Is the problem that the “elites” don’t know the “real” America or that we all just don’t know each other. The past election has underlined the divide but it may be that both ends need to be more open to better communication. By the way I scored a 27, but I am older, out of touch with a lot of contemporary culture and used to go fishing (but more than 5 years ago).

Moreover, some of these questions don’t apply to the urban working class at all. If you live in East New York or South Boston, do you own a pickup truck? Can you even afford one? Is there a nice pollution-free fishing spot in the average urban working-class neighborhood? Are you really likely to be an evangelical Christian if you live anywhere in the Northeast?

Just because my score is 21, in Lexington, MA does not mean I live in a bubble or that I don’t understand someone living in a different community. We all love, marry, have children. We work, support our community, care for our elders, have friendships. There is more that keeps our culture together than the poll implies.

Some of the poll questions are value-free, and lead to silly metrics.

E.g., take the 10 or so top grossing movies; why should I be considered to live in a bubble if I did not watch the majority of them? Mass audience movies, usually, are pretty dumb movies. From my perspective, you live in a bubble if you *do* like these movies. They are designed, precisely, to pamper the audience’s bubble. They often are escapist fables with fantastic plots – 2 hours to waste with little to learn.

So what if I don’t go to the top 9 restaurant chains, and instead go once in a while to McDonalds (which is not listed in the poll). The food might be better at your local sandwich place.

Just because other people have other preferences – for food, films, etc, does not mean I don’t understand these other people, or that I don’t empathize with them.

The better questions to ask, in my opinion, would be the kind of questions intended to tease out whether economical, ethical, moral choices popular in one SES group or zip code make good sense in another SES group or zip code. For that, however, the questions can’t be value-free.

I grew up in a small, working class town in SE Alaska. That’s about as insulated as you can get. I would consider it a “bubble” community. Politically, the residents are all over the map, with arch-conservatives, aging hippie liberals, and leave-me-the-hell-alone libertarians. I scored a 79 on the bubble quiz, which wasn’t a surprise. And I am as liberal as you get, based on anybody’s measure. Liberals are the ones fighting for the working class, trying to raise the minimum wage, trying to prevent the erosion of union rights, and fighting against more corporate welfare. Why liberals are painted as being elite baffles me. Trump’s cabinet of multi-billionaires don’t have a clue what the working class deals with on a daily basis.

Also, a lot of these questions are very specific to able-bodied people. If you’ve been painfully physically disabled from childhood or your teen years on, then even the “cushiest” job may make you ache all over. Or you may never have been able to work at all. And having to live off SSDI payments will drop you very close to the poverty line in no time. I think my bubble score may have been heavily affected by these variables.